What association do most people have with the word "tank"? That's right, a formidable fighting vehicle with excellent armor and weapons. And how could it be otherwise, if after
days 60-70 years, the design has not changed much? For 2-3 generations, people are so accustomed to the stereotype that when they mention the tank of the First World War, it destroys all ideas about that war and distorts reality. This article is intended to return the facts to their places and show the general public the difference between modern MBT and a combat vehicle of the early XX century.
First of all, it is worth noting that there could be no talk of mass use of armored vehicles, since the total number of combat-ready vehicles, even at the end of the war, barely reached a hundred throughout Europe. Positional warfare and constant shelling - these are the everyday life of that wartime. But back to technology. She was assigned a rather modest role - supporting the attacking infantry, inaccording to which they were designed.
The appearance of these steel monsters could scare only people who had never seen anything like it. For a modern person, the sight will be ridiculous: something resembling a box of riveted armor plates, with machine guns sticking out in all directions (less often, guns in side turrets) - here they are, typical tanks of the First World War. Photos of such vehicles do not even look a bit like pictures of armored vehicles of the 40s.
Under the armor means bulletproof sheets 10-15 mm thick. This was quite enough to ignore the enemy machine guns. Such protection could not contain the gap even of a high-explosive projectile. This was the first experience of using heavy equipment, which was in dire need of a test site, which turned out to be the First World War. The tanks of that time, no matter how modest their characteristics were, laid the foundation for a fundamental change in the very face of war in the next half century.
Armament mainly consisted of several machine guns, later light guns appeared. It must be understood that these were small-caliber guns with a short barrel. The tank of the First World War, according to the plan of the designers, was supposed to destroy infantry, break light defensive structures and suppress enemy machine-gun nests. The army then needed a mobile gun platform, not an independent branch of the military.
The strategists of that time did not think about any "blitzkrieg", and thereforethe speed of the combat vehicle was depressingly low. The cavalry coped well with its tasks and did not give up its positions until the beginning of the 40s. The tank of the First World War could not influence the outcome of the conflict, development began too late. Poor visibility, constant gas contamination of the fighting compartment, design imperfection and the lack of serious advantages over field artillery of that time - these are the reasons for the low combat effectiveness of equipment at the beginning of the last century.
Therefore, when you encounter a World War I tank in textbooks or fiction, imagine a shapeless mobile firing platform, then you can avoid any mistakes in assessing combat operations of the time when 3-5 tanks to the front did not mean absolutely nothing compared to the widely used cavalry or howitzer artillery.
